Software development is an iterative feedback loop. In big design-up-front (BDUF) projects, that loop could take a year. In traditional agile software development, it would last 2 weeks. Silicon Valley's move-fast-and-break-things ethos brought that down to mere hours.
The trend is clearly arcing towards shorter feedback cycles, and while it will never reach zero, we are now looking at minutes or even shorter than that.
The human bottleneck
The real bottleneck today is a carbon brain with painful context switches and a need to take a lunch break.
As we have handed off coding to the machine, we are redefining our role in the process. And right now, we still feel a human needs to have a place somewhere in that feedback loop. But where?
That is the big question for the coming months.
What is becoming clear, however, is where the human doesn't belong anymore.
Where the human does not belong anymore
Coding is the most straightforward one. The days of typing syntax are over. Having a human stare at an IDE is a wasteful approach that doesn't lead to better code. Coding agents are at such a level that we can easily delegate that work to them.
Code review is the next step. The "can you sign off on my PR" dance is a time waster. Linters, static analysis tools, unit tests and coding agents can do that better and faster than a human ever could. The knowledge-sharing angle is also breaking down. As we no longer write code, our colleagues don't need to know which code our agent wrote.
Writing documentation is also not a human's strength. Coding agents can keep Confluence and Notion up to date better than we can. There is no need to wait for a human to update the docs.
What about quality assurance?
Quality Assurance really is the last big hurdle. But there, we're also making steady progress. Claude Code shows potential for basic exploratory testing and generating Gherkin scenarios. Testing agents are on their way.
We are close to setting up a pipeline for iterative software development. The loop will be completely automated. That leaves us with no room for humans.
We will look at this machine from the outside and nudge it in the right direction. We will review big changes once or twice per day and sharpen the expectations.
"Now that we see it, we also want it to integrate with SharePoint."
"The email-sending logic is not core business. Break it off into a separate module."
We will no longer write PRDs or designs. Our specification will be a never-ending conveyor belt of working software.
We will review and test the output and guide the loop to deliver better products. That leaves us with taste, architecture, experiments, exploratory testing and deep technical insights. That will be our role. The rest of the product-building machine will be generated automatically.
Right now, QA is the bottleneck. It's the last place in the loop where humans are still needed. Before the year is over, that part of the feedback loop will likely be closed.
Crazy months ahead.
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